This invention relates to software executed on computer systems for displaying and storing image representations of documents.
Computer systems are often used to display an image representation of a scanned document such as a scanned page from a book, magazine and so forth. Such documents can contain text, colorized text and graphical or image content. Such documents are also stored as files on a storage media of the computer system. One problem associated with storing such files is that the size of the file is often large because of the color and image information.
Another problem encountered with displaying images of documents is the so-called "crease" problem. When a book is scanned the spine portion of the book will often produce shadows. Shadowing produces a crease or visually displeasing portion when the image is displayed. The presence of the crease is also undesirable for compression of the document since it can be confused with text or graphics and will in any event increase the size of the compressed file corresponding to the document.
Also specialized computer systems, so-called reading machines, have been used to improve the educational attainment of individuals with learning disabilities. These reading machines which are typically general purpose or PC-based computers include specialized software that enable the reading machine to read selected text aloud to a user of the machine. Such specialized software processes and inputs source documents and generates synthetic speech to enable the user to read through the document a word, line, sentence, etc. at a time. These reading machines include a scanner to provide one technique to input source documents to the user.